Book Presentation: Global Secularity Vol. 1-2 + Preview of Vol. 3

We are very happy to announce that the first two volumes of our Global Secularity Sourcebook have been published. Even though it will unfortunately still be a while before we can hold the hard copies in our hands, we would like to celebrate the successfull publication with you. We cordially invite you to the book presentation and discussion: 

14 February 2025

3-5 p.m. 

KFG Multiple Secularities (Strohsackpassage, room 4.55) 

Via zoom:
https://uni-leipzig.zoom-x.de/j/69547309570?pwd=JcfYhK6YVhbOXqxMmv2iKD7zLEX9xe.1
Meeting-ID: 695 4730 9570
Kenncode: 182416

In the meantime we suggest to take a look at the complete volumes online (open access).

Screening Religion: The Monk and the Gun

On Wednesday, 12 February, we will relaunch our film series Screening Religion with The Monk and the Gun, a movie about a Bhuddist monk who is planning a mysterious ceremony for an upcoming mock election in the kingdom of Bhutan.

Watch the trailer here.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with Dagmar Schwerk, Professor of Tibetology at Leipzig University.

12 February 2024

7:30 p.m.

Cinémathèque Leipzig, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 109 (new location!)

Free entry, donations welcome

Recent Publications

Global Secularity. A Sourcebook

Volume 1: Mapping the Academic Debate

Johannes Duschka, Christoph Kleine, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, and Florian Zemmin, eds.

This volume maps the international academic debate on secularity. It places seminal contributions from within ‘Western’ academia alongside less well-known texts from various parts of the world; in several cases this is the first time that they have been translated into English. The volume demonstrates that the academic debate on secularity was and is a global debate, with contributions from many regions.

The volume was published open access: read it here.

Global Secularity. A Sourcebook

Volume 2: The Middle East and North Africa

Florian Zemmin, Neguin Yavari, Markus Dressler and Nurit Stadler, eds.

This volume collects reflections on secularity from the Middle East and North Africa. To highlight proximate connections as well as resonances with debates elsewhere, it includes premodern contributions from the region as well as Jewish thought from Europe that have provided significant references for modern appropriations of secularity. The texts, for the most part previously untranslated, reflect commonalities within the region as well as its great diversity.

The volume was published open access: read it here.

Working Paper #28

Desecularisation of the State and Sacred Secularism: Politics and Religion in Mexico within the Latin-American Context

Carlos Nazario Mora Duro

Although secularisation in Latin America historically emerged as a process of distinction of the political sphere, Carlos Nazario Mora Duro argues in his paper that it is currently expressed as a democratic ideal through the process of the dispersal in society of certain secular notions favouring state autonomy, especially in those countries that maintain the secularism legally established in the nineteenth century. His approach raises the question of how the boundaries between religion and the state in Mexico have been defined historically, and what the current status of this differentiation is. He also advances the analytical notion of sacred secularism, as a principle and expectation in the public space.

Read the complete paper here.